Education and Career

Smith graduated from Syracuse University in 1881. His studies had been mainly in the arts and humanities, and he was proficient in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

In accordance with his father's wishes, he studied to be a lawyer, but when he was admitted to the bar in 1884, he accepted an instructorship in mathematics at the Cortland Normal School, which he had attended before Syracuse.

He advanced to professor of mathematics at the Michigan State Normal School and then principal of the New York State Normal School. In 1901, Smith became a professor of mathematics at the Teachers College at Columbia University. He held this position until he retired in 1925.

Smith wrote several mathematics textbooks and pieces on the history of mathematics. Notably, with Yoshio Mikami, he coauthored A History of Japanese Mathematics (1914), the first resource on the history of Japanese mathematics in English. He also translated mathematical works of René Descartes and Felix Klein from Latin, French, and German into English. Smith served as mathematical editor for several encyclopedias and on the editorial committee of the Monthly.

He was active in the International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics as vice president (1908-20), president (1928-32), and honorary president (after 1932). For the AMS, he was librarian, associate editor of the Bulletin of the AMS for eighteen years, and vice president (1932).